16 Most Anticipated Books of Early 2026
The New Year is here, and we can’t wait for all the exciting books being released in the coming months. Here are 16 of the most anticipated books of early 2026. All titles are already available to be placed on hold—click the buttons below to reserve your copy. And if you really want to dive into reading this year, learn about how we can help you reach your reading goals and sign up for our exciting Winter Reading Challenges for all ages starting Monday, January 12!
I Don’t Wish You Well by Jumata Emill
Release Date: January 20
Five years ago, four teen boys were murdered—and the case went cold. As Pryce investigates the unsolved crime for his podcast, he uncovers crucial clues that were overlooked the first time around.
Vigil by George Saunders
Release Date: January 27
Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others.
Last First Kiss by Julian Winters
Release Date: January 27
Jordan Carter wishes he could forget his first kiss, the one he shared with Jamie Peters as a teen. And the one they almost shared again last year before Jamie made it clear he wasn’t the “right” man for Jordan to be with while he’s figuring himself out. Now, Jordan’s fully focused on his career as an event planner, until his boss assigns him to plan a new client’s high-profile wedding. The bride’s man-of-honor? None other than Jamie. As things ramp up the closer they get to the wedding, so does their relationship. But can Jordan afford to pursue Jamie if he’s still unsure of who he is?
Sibylline by Melissa de la Cruz
Release Date: February 3
Three friends share a dream: to attend the world’s most prestigious magical university. All three are rejected, so instead, they decide to steal the education they believe they deserve.
It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica
Release Date: February 3
Courtney Gray’s tranquil family vacation is shattered when she finds the lifeless bodies of her brother and sister-in-law in the lakeside cottage next door. Her teenage niece Reese is nowhere to be found, while her nephew Wyatt lies asleep upstairs, unharmed. As the police descend on the quiet resort town, disturbing secrets about Courtney’s family start to emerge. As Courtney begins to unravel the terrible mystery, she realizes that everyone around her has something to hide.
Carnival Fantástico by Angela Montoya
Release Date: February 3
Esmeralda poses as the carnival’s fortune-teller, using her charm and wit to play the part. But when her former crush Ignacio reappears to warn her that the carnival is more dangerous than it seems, everything she thought she knew is thrown off course.
This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman
Release Date: February 10
When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into decades of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives—divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals—their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan
Release Date: February 24
When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers and artists all agree: it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. In this exploration of consciousness, Pollan discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves.
Kin by Tayari Jones
Release Date: February 24
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves at 18 for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother and fixated on finding her, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, culminating in a battle for her life.
You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom by Vincent Tirado
Release Date: March 10
When Papi Ramon, the patriarch of the wealthy Abreu family dies, he gives the family one last message in the will: “One of you is el bacà, the demon that I made a deal with. Get rid of them, or you will be damned.” Xiomara watches as everyone dismisses this as the joke of a senile old man. But when a storm breaks out, forcing the entire family—Xiomara’s aunts and uncles and cousins—to remain in the house, suddenly a tense few hours of surviving her family turns into a vicious night of recrimination, violence, accusations and murder.
Python’s Kiss by Louise Erdrich
Release Date: March 12
Written over the past two decades, Erdrich’s magnificent story collection features a range of characters—a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth (and sanity) is challenged and ordinary people: bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father. These stories offer an opportunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America’s most important writers.
Prodigal Tiger by Samantha Chong
Release Date: March 17
Caroline is accustomed to living in exile to protect her family from the dangers of her magic. But when she’s suddenly summoned home after her brother’s mysterious disappearance, she must confront the truth about the island she once knew.
The Fortune Flip by Lauren Kung Jessen
Release Date: March 17
Hazel Yen would love to be the person who doesn’t believe in bad luck. But having lost her job, her mom, her optimism and even her dim-sum leftovers, she’s sitting in a fortune teller’s booth, desperate for a sign that her luck might change, which is when fate crashes into her, disguised as Logan Wells. After one spontaneous and mind-melting kiss, Hazel’s terrible misfortune starts taking a turn for the miraculous. There’s only one problem: Logan’s luck has taken a turn for the worse.
The Keeper by Tana French
Release Date: March 31
On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river. In a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.
American Fantasy by Emma Straub
Release Date: April 7
When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous, 90s-era boy band and 3,000 screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood. Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie, newly divorced, turning 50 with an empty nest and here on a lark to appease her sister. Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the familiar music and the throngs of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she meets one of the band members, she has accessed a new sense of possibility.
Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez
Release Date: April 21
Spring, 2007: At 26, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She’s in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs and saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in. No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, an up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighborhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself. But when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighborhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives.
